Born in San Francisco, California in 1960, Tim Hawkinson lives and works in Los Angeles. His work typically incorporates diverse household and industrial materials, and is often mechanized to emit sound, evoke breath, or record the passage of time. He frequently uses his own body as a source and subject and fabricates most of his own conceptions using do-it-yourself technologies. In his relatively short but prolific career, Hawkinson has produced paintings, drawings, photographs, textiles, kinetic sculptures, fountains, rubbings, and assemblages.

A large mid-career survey at the Whitney Museum in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2005 brought international acclaim to Hawkinson's enigmatic and wide-ranging body of work.